Who Pulled Down The Blind?

  We redid the roof on the house this fall. In steel. Because it lasts. We'd totally forgotten that one of the results of the steel roofing is that snow builds up, and ices against the metal surface, and then starts to slowly slide off the roof anytime there's a bit of warmth... You then have this thick layer of snow and ice that starts to slowly slide off the roof surface towards the ground.
 In warmish weather, it's a fast, noisy and potentially dangerous thing. If there's no warmth, it's much slower, and far more 'weird'. So, we're currently experiencing the *slow slide* as it passes by the kitchen window. We've already dealt with the first *slow slide* as it blocked the tv satellite!

BeraBarbie and KettilKen

I realize that I’ve never really shared this odd little corner of my life. Originally I’d planned to make a web page, back when I was learning about web pages. But Dreamweaver broke my brain, and by the time I’d been introduced to Nvu, I’d forgot all about this. And then I switched computers and forgot all about Nvu… sigh. And then they invented blogs…

But somehow this little Project That Ate New York just never came out of the shadows. Which is too bad, because it had been a huge amount of very intense fun!

 So… it appears that back in 2004 (or earlier, I’m just going by the one date I can find on an old jpeg) I decided to make a Barbie for my niece. At that point she was young enough to be interested in Barbies.

 And it all started with finding a Barbie, and trying to make her better. Or at least, more specific. Because for me, growing up in the era of Barbie As A New Thing, it was all about what you could do with the Barbie, not what the manufacturer decided to sell you for the Barbie. And that meant your Barbie was never the same as anyone else’s Barbie, and that was half the excitement. (Or so I tell myself now; I can’t remember that far back. Really.)

But anyway….what happened was that I decided to make Arielle a Viking Barbie. A proper Norse Barbie, not a Wagnerian Valkyrie Barbie, or a Xena Warrior Princess Barbie or even a Red Sonja Barbie. Just your basic Viking Age Norse woman of middle to upper class Barbie.

 So I started by making her a nice linen undershift. I opted for sleeveless, because I could see that while my Barbie was a little bit flexible, too much fabric around her upper arms was going to be awkward, and binding. I also realized very quickly that scale was going to be a problem. At Barbie-size, pretty much all fabric and thread was starting to seem pretty coarse and ‘homespun’, not fine quality at all. Even at my most anal, I couldn’t make stitches that didn’t seem inordinately sloppy. Perhaps if I’d had, and used, a beading needle?

 She needed socks. And shoes.

 Naalbinding the socks wasn’t too bad. After all, Barbies tend to have pointed ‘highheel’ feet, so turning a heel in her socks wasn’t really important, and she ended up with fairly simple tube socks.

 The shoes were trickier, because again, at that scale, any hole I made in the leather vastly weakened the entire shoe. I ended up having to make a simpler shoe than I would have liked, with less construction, less stitching. A bit more like a bog shoe, though I think it was stitched up the back seam. (Mind you, now I’m merely trying to tell from the not-so-good photos. BeraBarbie also predated any good digital cameras in this house. In fact, it seems that a lot of my pictures of her are from scanning her!) In the long run, I think her shoes came across looking like I’d liked, stylewise, so I can’t complain too much.

 Then I made her a linen gown. Because she is representing a higher status lady than I often play in DARC, I chose a lovely red linen for her gown. Again, on MY scale it’s a beautiful fine fabric. On BeraBarbie’s scale, it again became a much coarser fabric. Sigh. Almost a hopsacking. And once more, stitching came across as far larger and less neat than I’d have liked. (Obviously something to experiment with – fabric choices and methods of stitching.)

 The decorative cord trim on her dress was fingerloop braided, but as I recall, her belt was tablet woven. Unfortunately for the belt, even forgiving the tension problems along the edges, there was a trade off: only having to weave a short piece allowed me a better chance to not screw up the pattern, but only having to weave a short piece on that scale was also awkward, because naturally I didn’t just set up to do a 2 foot piece, and choose the best six inches. Oh no! I set up to weave a six or eight inch piece! (Sometimes I wonder wear my brains are….)

 The apron fabric is a bit too boucle to be properly period, but was decorative and colourful, with a handloomed quality. I chose to do it in the tube-style that I’ve come to fancy, though BeraBarbie didn’t really require the extra gores I use for human sized Norse women. I fingerbraided straps that almost matched, and used some small decorative buttons for brooches.

 I was very lucky when it came to beads. Darrell had recently acquired a box of beads at an auction, where he’d been more interested in the box and a few of the beads, and there had been a wealth of unloved tiny beads that worked just beautifully.

 Overall, I’m sure she’s rather ostentatiously clad. Too many beads, too bright of fabric. But her excuse is that she was going to live with a young girl, and pretty is important in those sorts of relationships.

 To complete her ensemble I gave her a linen Coppergate cap, though both the gauge of the linen and the tie are awkward. (I think there’s a possibility that another time I might have to make a decision between choosing appropriate fibres, or opting instead for a better scale and overall appearance. Here I had chosen the correct natural fibres, but they end up looking wrong by reason of size.)

 For outdoor wear I made BeraBarbie a shawl, with a hammered bronze pin, and a tiny replica of the Orkney Hood, complete with the tablet woven edging of fringe that I’d never done on my own.

[Note: This project was completed before I knew about the eventual redating of the Orkney find.

 http://www.orkneyjar.com/history/orkneyhood.htm

 The Orkney hood is now assumed to be earlier than Viking Age, Iron Age instead. However, my information on it was acquired back in the mid-90’s when I needed to construct a hood for the pilot project at L’Anse aux Meadows.

To complete the package, I had made her a simple drawstring leather pouch and a hammered bronze knife. And because “Idol hands are Loki’s playthings”, she had a basket of hand-dyed, handspun yarns, some naalbinding to work on, and a drop spindle.

 Some time after that I was inspired to create a KettilKen, but his story can wait for another day…

One Fish, Two Fish

For the life of me, I cannot find any information that really says for sure that Koi change colour, or what causes it, but this year's brown fish now proudly include two red fish and a black and red fish. It's kind of exciting watching them change from day to day...

Look, Dave!

PIE!!!

The Tough Decision

So, I wandered down to the pond, and part of my routine was checking on the frogs, and the koi, seeing what level the water was at, what stage the plants around the pond were in, it having been a kind of unnatural sort of spring.... And yes...checking hopefully in the spot where last year we'd had one stalk of asparagus, and later, one asparagus fern.



There it is! Again, this year, *ONE* stalk of asparagus. I can't really track down completely useful information on the growing and propagation of asparagus. I only know that we didn't plant it, and last year was the first occasion of such exotic discoveries.
Last year I was lucky, as far as I can see, that somehow I missed a stalk, or it came along more slowly, to go to fern, since I think they're an important part of there being further asparagus.

So, to harvest and feast? Or to leave it. In hopes of continuation.

I think we're going to make the hard decision and forego our culinary delights this year. Sigh.

(Not that there's a huge amount of delight in ONE stalk, even carefully divided lengthwise, betwixt two people...)

2000 Words

Because you can almost never go wrong with a picture of a cat....

Recycling

Why waste a perfectly good clementine box...?

No Room At The Inn

So, an odd sort of Christmas parable. Just before Christmas, yet again there was a day when both Lily and I perked up our ears and thought we heard something as we passed through Darrell's indoor shop.

('Indoor' being a relative term. Yes, the room is framed in out of part of the garage space, and insulated to a degree, and heated very mildly, but that's about as far as it goes. For all intents and purposes it is *outside* of the house. In fact, come wintertime, it becomes extra pantry and root cellar storage in a pinch, because things will keep cold enough!)

Anyway, Lily mistrusts the room for reasons known best to herself and her little cat mind, so the attempt to let her out into the rest of the garage, which was far less deep than the official outdoors, didn't go so well. And then I heard the tiny voice. A little mewing voice. Lily heard it too. And went over to stare at the cupboards under the sink, and the ceiling above it.
Since last fall we'd had abandoned kittens that had stuffed themselves in the soffits (go figure...) I layered on the winter gear to explore that possibility.

[Note: winter in Wareham can be a polar experience. We're in the snowbelt. And then some. We get the 'north of Toronto' snow. We get 'lake effect' snow. We get the 'highest point in Ontario' snow. In short, we get snow. You've seen the pictures, right?]

In fact, winter in Wareham can be very much like the descriptive passage from Jean Shepherd's A Christmas Story.
"Preparing for school during an Indiana winter was like getting ready for extended deep-sea diving. Long johns, three pairs of socks, high tops, overshoes, corduroy knickers, flannel lumberjack shirt, four sweaters, fleece-lined leatherette sheepskin coat, gloves, mittens over the gloves, stocking cap, ear flap hat over the stocking cap... and a scarf wound around and around until only the faint glint of two eyes peering out of a mound of moving dry goods told you that there was a kid in there. Somewhere."

So, we'd had snow, and moving through the yard as opposed to around the outer edges of the yard is less of an option. So I put on the big boots. (Several years ago, I gave up on the idea of any boots remotely resembling something ladylike or fashionable and have just opted for big winter snowboots, or bigger higher wellies for short duration slogs. And snowshoes if I really intend to make it to the compost heap....) And the big coat, and gloves, and a scarf. And wormed my way out and around the winter barricade of tarps and 2x4's that we erect about ourselves in winter, in hopes of leaving some lifeline to the outer world traversible. At least with the minimum of tunneling.
And then I floundered my way around the side of the building to check for small animals on the outside.
(Seems the lost cat was smarter than I was!)

After I scrabbled my way back in and emptied the boots, I tried making inviting, small animal noises in the loft, and then again in the main room of our driveshed garage space. Eventually I was answered, and a skinny black cat emerged from the depths of under or over the shop space, and demanded attention. (No nervous feral barn cat this...)

He also seemed to have no particular fear of any of our cats. Though they didn't think much of him, and announced it quite plainly.
Because the weather took a turn for the colder, and the Spare Cat didn't show any interest at all in leaving, or looking for somewhere he should have been that wasn't here, Darrell rigged up a milk crate with a worklight attached for warmth. Last thing we wanted was to discover a catsicle in the morning!

As is usual, no-one on the crossroads appeared to have lost him, or know anyone further afield who might have. And, of course, they all already have their share of adopted abandoned animals.










He was definitely a people cat, and more than determined that we should let him in. Soft-hearted that we are, he eventually managed to spend some of his time in Darrell's shop.
Then, as Christmas loomed, he got cunning and discovered that if anyone wasn't wary enough as they went into the house, or their hands were full, he could streak by and get in too! That was fun.
He was a very persistent little cat!

We didn't worry too much. Although we weren't really looking to adopt another cat, if there were no other options, and our other cats would allow it...

Thing is, we'd lost our fourth cat in August. Both Darrell and I miss her a great deal, but we'd realized shortly after that, just how much our cats don't. It was only after we were back to the original trio that we saw just how unhappy Bear had been with her around, and how much his personality had changed now she was gone again.
It had always been a bit like a bar in the Neutral Zone with Klingons and StarFleet not getting along... After over three years with Coco, it was still just a shaky temporary cease fire, not peacetime.

Anyway, Spare Cat was pleased to come in where there was heat and comfortable places to sit, and tried to become invisible so no-one would throw him out. But the amount of time he could sit still was pretty limited and eventually he'd just be in to too many places he shouldn't be, or have upset the cats too much, and out he'd get tossed again!

Just before Christmas, a good friend who'd been 'pimping him out' to everyone she knew figured she'd found a possible new home for him, so we didn't worry as much, and we'd let him come in for visits more frequently, until he'd wear out his welcome.





And after the Christmas weekend, we bundled him off to a new life, with a new person and fellow-cat and name. So, hopefully another abandoned or lost cat has been saved. I wish I knew where they keep coming from. And why the cats that show up seem to always be nice cats, friendly cats, attractive cats, cats of an age where they need to be neutered, coincidentally just about when people need to step up and accept some responsibility for owning a pet...

But I'm so happy that there are also people out there who helped us, and were willing to take a little spare cat into their home. It made our Christmas a bit happier.